Theatre review: Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde at the Rose, Kingston

As the one-man double act in the lead role, Phil Daniels looks utterly befuddledMARK DOUET

★★☆☆☆Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 novella has spawned numerous interpretations, many of them radical reworkings of the narrative. There have been films, plays, musicals, pop songs and a ballet. The attraction is obvious: the story of split personality, good against evil, civilised mind versus bestial urge is a gothic chiller rich in metaphorical possibility. Here, however, in an unwelcome feat of transformation, it becomes two and a half hours of tedium.

It’s bad enough that David Edgar’s adaptation — written for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1991, then revised five years later — is almost defiantly thrill-free, but Kate Saxon’s touring production throttles the life out of it. The action crawls by, with no sense of peril or substance.

And as the one-man double act in…

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